The journey of a child survivor of Auschwitz: A single case narrative.


A narrative is presented of the case of Clara, an Orthodox Jewish child survivor of the Holocaust, who spent the years of World War II in the Auschwitz Concentration Camp, beginning at the age of 4 years. Clara survived the deaths of her mother, father, brother, and grandparents, who were murdered in her presence. She herself was brutally sexually abused. Rescued from a displaced persons camp by 2 Orthodox men from America, Clara, a religious and spiritual girl, was embraced and nurtured by a couple who had survived the Holocaust but lost their daughter. The love of this adoptive family and the Jewish community did a great deal to help her to develop into a mature woman. Yet although she had a very affectionate relationship with her husband, she had no memory of the act of sexual intercourse with him. Many years of psychotherapy, during which both her sexuality and her spirituality were evoked and cherished, made her progressively able to accept the challenges and joys of her life. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved)